Spring is springing and the plums are in blossom. Any day now the first pear trees will also start to bloom. Volunteers in the garden are working flat out this week to get everything ready for Sunday’s reopening. All winter the work of the garden has continued as it does in any garden and we hope it will be looking its best so that those who come to the Farmers Market to buy can see the quality of the produce as it grows. We like to think that there is always something new for visitors to see and this spring should be no exception with a fine display of outdoor overwintered salads in a wide variety of colours and leaf shapes showing just what will grow throughout an Irish winter. There will be lots of new signs around as well, with tips on growing to make it easier to find out just what we are doing even if a member of the garden staff isn’t close at hand.

As well as pictures showing what is going on in the garden just now we show before and after photographs of what happens to kitchen waste and shredded paper in a worm bin. They are the perfect answer to identity theft!

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Easter 2009 is late and follows a warmer than usual and drier than usual spring. With any luck the late potatoes, for harvesting at the end of summer or beginning of autumn, will go into the ground this weekend – Good Friday is the traditional planting date for them. By the time they come up the last of the frost should be gone so they won’t need the protection that the early spuds did.

By now all the seeds for the plants that will be grown indoors over the summer should be sown – tomatoes, cucumber, peppers and climbing beans. And the soil is warm and dry enough to sow many of the outdoor summer crops like lettuce, peas, broad beans, summer cabbage, white turnips, spinach, carrots, broccoli and chard.

If you have indoor growing space you can sow the seeds of courgettes, french and runner beans, sweet corn and other slightly tender crops. They shouldn’t be planted out until the second week of May though, just in case they get caught by a late frost. And you can still get a good crop if you sow them out of doors in May.

What is harder to remember is that most of the autumn and winter crops need to be sown now as well. This includes parsnips, winter cabbages – red, white and green, kale, purple sprouting broccoli, swedes, cauliflowers and leeks.

And don’t forget to sow lots of colourful annual flowers now – you can mix them in with the vegetables and they will attract bees and beneficial insects to your garden and confuse the ones that want to share your veggies with you when you don’t want to share. And the vegetable garden is a good place to grow a few extra flowers to cut for the house as well.

If you planted bulbs in the autumn the Easter garden can be full of colour, with tulips and hyacinths at their very best, while the fruit garden will be full of plum and pear blossom.

March 26th 2009

Spring is really springing at last and the garden is a busy place.

In the flower garden we are tidying up and lifting and dividing the perennial plants – some will be replanted and others will be potted up to grow on for sale. When we’ve finished we will cover all the soil with a nice layer of compost to feed the plants for the next growing season.

We’ve almost finished pruning the fruit trees and bushes – should have all been done by now but at Sonairte it’s a big job. Too late to do any more pruning of grape vines – they can bleed to death if you prune them once the air begins to warm up.

And we are sowing seeds, and more seeds, and even more seeds. All the cabbage family need sowing – not just the cabbages but the Brussels sprouts, the kales, the cauliflowers and broccoli. And the chard and spinach. Parsnips and carrots need sowing too – parsnips are slow to come up so a few radishes in the rows will help to mark where they are. Carrots benefit from scallions sown along the row – the scent will confuse carrot root fly later.

Early potatoes are traditionally planted by St Patrick’s Day – but you can go on planting later varieties right up to the middle of May. After the last two wet summers our late varieties are the blight resistant Sarpo strains – they should be safe whatever the weather does this year.

Indoors we’ve sown tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, peppers and all the other more unusual tender plants we go in for here. We’ve also sown lots of salad plants, spinach, brassicas and all the other outdoor veg for summer. We’ll be selling our spare organic vegetable plants this year